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Wednesday May 14, 2014 5:53 AM

What is happening to the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram is tragic. The sinking of the
Titanic, the fall of Saigon, the British defeat at Gallipoli, the Dred Scott decision — tragedies
all. You can go on all day and all night listing terrible calamities and even lesser injustices,
misfortunes and other evidence that life isn’t fair. But you will probably collapse from exhaustion
before you reach Jeb Bush’s difficulty becoming the third President Bush.

The
New Yorker cartoons write themselves. Bush, in all his blue-blazered glory, sitting next
to, well, just about anyone at a bar (or standing in front of the Pearly Gates, or lying on a
psychiatrist’s couch, or visiting the complaints department) lamenting that he never got his turn.
Or maybe he’d wear a shirt saying, “My Dad and My Brother Lived at the White House and All I Got
Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

Of course, that’s not actually all Bush got. He was a successful two-term Florida governor (a
much tougher job than being governor of Texas, particularly for a Republican). He has a lovely
family. He’s made a bundle in the private sector, and he’s a respected voice in lots of policy
debates. But he hasn’t checked the last and most important box on his to-do list.

And I doubt he ever will.

It’s well known that Republicans tend to pick the candidate whose “turn” it is. Except for 1964
and 2000, the guy who came in second the last time or who in some way was perceived as next in line
got the nomination. Barry Goldwater was a special case because of the rise of the conservative
movement and the sense that JFK’s assassination made LBJ unbeatable.

George W. Bush was a special case for completely different reasons. There really wasn’t anyone
next in line that year, but “Dubya” came the closest because the GOP felt his dad had been robbed
in 1992 by Bill Clinton (and Ross Perot).

This raises an important challenge for Jeb Bush. It should be obvious that, even among
Republicans, nostalgia for George W. Bush doesn’t run nearly so high as it did for his father. This
is a key difference between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush; Democrats are nostalgic for Clinton,
Republicans aren’t for Bush.

But all this misses the main source of Jeb Bush’s trouble. Contrary to a lot of
pseudo-psychological analysis, Republicans don’t go for the guy whose “turn” it is because they are
hard-wired to be hierarchical and orderly. They do it because the guy who came in second last time
spends the next four years wooing the conservative base.

For instance, George H.W. Bush led the moderate wing in 1980. For eight years as vice president,
he courted the Reagan wing. Bush beat Robert Dole in 1988 by claiming to be the better
Reaganite.

George the Younger had it a bit easier being a born-again Christian from Texas, but he didn’t
coast on the Bush name, either.

Just ask Mitt Romney, Dole or John McCain: You don’t have to win over the whole of the GOP base,
but you do need a big enough share of conservatives that when they are added to the more moderate
voters already on your side, you have enough to win. (Reagan did this in reverse: He had the base
largely locked up and then worked assiduously to reassure the moderates.)

This is a lesson many on the right seem incapable of learning, which is why every primary season
we see half a dozen right-wingers battling for the title of “purest conservative,” while the
moderate candidates fight merely for the title of “conservative enough.”

And that’s Jeb Bush’s problem. He’s antagonized the base on hot-button issues such as
immigration and the Common Core curriculum, without trying to persuade anyone he’s conservative
enough. He even presented Clinton with an award on the eve of the first anniversary of the Benghazi
attack.

Reasonable people can debate his stances, but trust me when I say the base feels decidedly
unwooed.

His brother and his father understood that the GOP is a conservative party, and they maneuvered
accordingly. Jeb Bush doesn’t seem to care, which is why he’ll probably get the T-shirt.